Bob Morrish

This book is a lovely holiday companion piece.

I am a seasonal reader. When the days become noticeably shorter, usually August here in my hometown, I start reading material of a supernatural, horrific type. This goes on until after Halloween, through the dark days of the winter solstice. After the solstice my head turns towards all those lovely floor plans, both the Victorian kind published by Downing, Sloan and Bicknell as well as all the more recent floor plans available online.

This is an essential volume in the library of everyone whose favorite holiday theme is black and orange. At times it is as nostalgic and sticky sweet as candy corn, at other times as bleak and atmospheric as a harvested cornfield guarded by one lone eerie scarecrow.

If only this book would emanate the aromas of candle wax, dead leaves and scorched pumpkin when the pages are opened.............it would be a perfect world.… (mehr)

Since there are only 4 authors in the collection, I can speak about my feelings on each one. Lucky them.

One of my grandfathers was this amazingly brilliant scholar. I could throw out his credentials, but I'm not going to. Suffice to say, he was an "academic" type writer. But he was a consummate verbal story teller. He could sit down and tell these stories that would have you leaning in, listening closely -- funny, heartbreaking, scary, informative stories. My mom told him he needed to write these tales down for the family. And while my grandfather was a terrific writer, he was an academic writer. These stories lost all their charm when he tried to write them down. They lost his voice.

This was what happened with the one and only story in the collection by Gemma Files. I have no doubt that this woman is an intelligent person, but this story bored me beyond words. It's what hung me up for way too long as I just kept putting the book down. Her use of language was very academic, even in the moments where it wasn't called for. The story itself is based on a research experiment, so you would expect the cold preciseness of academia writing. But, that carried over into the every day characters and their lives and situations too. I wish I could have had a sampling of more of her work.

Tim Waggoner was next up. He was very refreshing and while I enjoyed all 3 of his entries, my favorite was Darker Than Water. I won't go into any details because I fear anything I say would take away from this little gem and someone's own discoveries. I will say, there are characters in here who are very much "Low Men in Yellow Coats."

K.D.s Wish ended up being the one that got me in R. Patrick Gates stories. A supernatural element with a message about what it means to be normal -- and whose definition of normal is more important and correct? His other two stories were odd, but interesting. He kept me going from point A to point B nicely.

Finally, the last author in the book, Caitlín R. Kiernan gave me my favorite story from the whole collection.
The Daughter of the Four of Pentacles pulled me right in, broken down into little vignettes within the story, each was magical and she used just the right tempo with her beautiful use of the language.

Her final story was also interesting and we learn, dead men do tell tales.

After each author's section of work, they included author's notes, which again I find just as fascinating as the stories themselves. Little afterwords about their author moments. Always a welcomed behind-the-scenes look.

The cover art and the art included in the book were done by J. Myroshnychenko. Nice job.… (mehr)